She insisted that every maintenance manual include a diagram clear enough for someone working in a noisy cargo bay at the end of a long shift.
The engineers initially objected that the diagrams were not elegant.
Imani said elegance was not much use if the equipment failed where nobody could summon an elegant engineer.
Within a year, technicians at remote clinics were using her design to identify storage problems before the medicine was damaged.
Hravik established a witness protection office and appointed people who did not report to commercial sponsors.
His reputation recovered slowly, and he accepted that recovery could not be demanded from the people he had disappointed.
At a council meeting, he admitted that his early hesitation had delayed the public warning.
Several council members criticized the statement as unnecessary.
Hravik said it was necessary precisely because it made him uncomfortable.
Vela returned to her schooling with the help of counselors and teachers who understood that returning to ordinary life did not mean forgetting what had happened.
Some mornings she wanted to study engineering.
On other mornings she wanted to stay home with Nerin and make tea that smelled like the rain on their hillside.
Both were allowed.
Nerin found work with an independent medical safety institute where she could examine supply systems without reporting to the companies that owned them.
She was offered public recognition for exposing the secret program.
She accepted the recognition on behalf of the workers who had helped preserve evidence and the patients whose names had been hidden.
When a journalist asked whether she felt like a hero, she replied that she had spent too long being afraid and had simply decided not to let fear make every decision for her.
The journalist asked Vela what she wanted to become.
Vela said she wanted to build machines that told people the truth when they were broken.
Imani, watching the interview later, declared that this was the best description of engineering she had ever heard.
Hamish eventually returned to ordinary trading, although ordinary had become a flexible word in his life.
He carried textiles, machine parts, agricultural tools, and once a shipment of harmless decorative stones that turned out to glow whenever somebody sang badly nearby.
He claimed the stones had ruined an entire evening of entertainment.
He refused several lucrative offers to become a permanent representative for medical corporations.
When people asked why, he said he had never trusted anyone who wanted to put his name on a bottle before checking what was inside it.
